Mills & Boon, £4.99, ISBN 978-0-263-91742-0
Historical Romance, 2016

Nicole Locke’s In Debt to the Enemy Lord is part of a series called Lovers and Legends, but don’t fret, this one stands alone very well.

However, I’m not sure if it would stand up to scrutiny from people that want a more authentic-feeling medieval romance.

Here, the heroine Anwen scolds and berates the hero, Teague, who is the lord of the land, as if they were equals, and nobody here seems to treat him like the boss of the land at all… and he lets them. Also, Anwen says things like “from your perspective” and other present-day turn of phrases. The whole thing resembles people doing some medieval cosplay, running around in costumes and pretending to be knights and damosels.

Anyway, it’s 1290, and Teague is the lord of Gwalchdu. However, because he is half-English and half-Welsh, and he fought for the English, he is now called the Traitor by the folks of Gwalchdu.

He is aware of this, and instead of razing the villagers’ homes to the ground and telling them to go eat dung at some other place more to their fancy, he broods in his castle with mostly his brother for company. Naturally, the brother fills the shoes of the jovial, happy-go-lucky, friend-to-the-heroine stereotype, alongside the hag of their aunt that disapproves of the heroine because someone has to do that.

That’s right, Anwen ends up in the castle because she is being the precious, feisty thing, trying to retrieve a runaway falcon only to fall down a tree and oops, that’s her head hitting the ground.

Because she is the kind to talk sassy things out loud about mean English lords to herself, and she is of course overheard by Teague and his brother, our hero decides that she must remain in his place until he is absolutely confident that this woman is not the enemy that is running around the place.

Considering that there is only one character that is determined to paint the heroine in the worst light possible, I wonder about the identity of the villain. Oh, the suspense! Could it be… the hero’s brother? I’m so lost.

I am going to go straight to the point: this thing goes round and round in circles for way too long. Anwen wants to escape, but she really doesn’t because the sight of the hero makes her want to give him a close look up her innermost perspective. Teague won’t let her go, but she is so hot and he really wants to have a go at her instead. These two remain stuck in this eye-rolling standstill for almost two-third of the story, constantly sniping and talking about the same things over and over that I can only wonder whether the author is writing in circles while desperately waiting for an inspiration to take her story out of the rut.

Meanwhile, our heroine wails constantly that she is needed at her village so she must escape. I don’t know who needs her, really, as she is not anyone of importance—she’s not the blacksmith, the tiller, the doctor, or anything that remotely fits even the loosest definition of “essential”.

She says that her sister’s husband loves to wallop the sister bloody every other day, but considering that she can’t stop that man, I don’t know how she can consider it very important that she is by her sister’s side as the poor dear becomes her husband’s punching bag. Maybe she just likes to watch?

Then, she says that she needs to go back to find out whether the falconer has lost his hand due to having let the falcon she is chasing to run loose. Even if the poor sod loses a hand in the process, how is she being by the man’s side is of any help to that man? It’s not like she is going to use super glue to attach back the hand or something.

Seriously, this nitwit overvalues herself way too much. I laugh when she tells Teague that the villagers must be storming the castle to look for her, and Teague tells her that so far he hasn’t seen anyone looking for her.

Meanwhile, for a castle with barely any staff, it is surprisingly well run without any issues. Maybe the hero just has to press the button on the remote to switch on the electricity and the rest works like magic.

This is truly a story that feels like a made-up medieval romance. There is no sense of power structure or hierarchy among the cast of characters, and everyone mouths off to Teague like they are equals or, in the case of Anwen, she is his better. As for the romance, she tells him that he can only stick a digit into her with her consent and he’s like, oh yeah, silly him, it’s not like he’s a 13th century lord of the castle and she is a peasant because everyone here is present day folks running around in costumes.

Also, this is a romance that will not happen if any or both of them had been ugly or fat. She feels no fear in her situation because she’s far more busy growing horny horns at the sight of him. He doesn’t really treat her badly in any way in spite of him being convinced that she’s the villain he has been looking for, because he is bursting in his big boy pants at how sexy she is.

Things finally happen in the late third or so, when the villain gets as bored as me and starts doing villainous things. Shocker, this person kidnaps the heroine for the hero to come to the rescue. That’s right, when things happen, they happen just as expected because these things happen in pretty every other historical romance out there. The fact that these happenings are the least boring parts of the story speaks volumes about how tedious the circular romance had been up to that point.

So, this is a boring romance, it has zero historical authenticity, and the story comes alive only when it’s replicating the tropes done to death already in every other romance out there.

On the bright side, the narrative style isn’t awful and in fact is on the readable side, so I suppose there are likely far worse ways than reading this one in order to be bored into a stupor.